Saturday, April 17, 2010

The Judgement

The Judgment (Das Urteil) is a short story by Franz Kafka which depicts the conversation between a man and his father, where many conflicts arise. The father talks in an accusative way, and finally condemns his son to dying drowned. The man immediately runs to a nearby bridge, from which he throws himself to the river. The relationship between the characters bears some similarities with the one between Kafka and his father, which was also very difficult. The story has been analyzed under the scope of psychoanalysis. It was written in only two days (September 22-23 of 1912) in a time when Kafka wrote some of his best works, such as The Metamorphosis.